


Surfacing

by AconitumNapellus



Series: Deprivation [2]
Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (TV)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Madness, Psychosis, Recovery, Sensory Deprivation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-05
Updated: 2017-04-05
Packaged: 2018-10-15 02:44:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10548714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AconitumNapellus/pseuds/AconitumNapellus
Summary: Illya is still recovering from his terrible sensory deprivation at the hands of Thrush's Dr Malta, but something happens that threatens to send him all the way back to the start.Thanks to MrsSpooky for giving me the confidence to post this as it is.





	

The walls were crushing around him. He was lying flat on the floor, the floor hard against his shoulder blades, against his spine. It was all white above him, spreading around him, the walls falling in, and his arms were bound to him by fabric and he rolled and tried to cry out, but he couldn’t cry out, he couldn’t make his voice work, he couldn’t make more than a breathy rasp come from his throat. He flailed and strained and tried to free his arms, and he couldn’t do it, he couldn’t, oh god, god…

When he woke he was actually screaming, his screams the only thing in the utter darkness of his room. He was lashing out, his arms suddenly sweeping, and his fingertips hit the bedside lamp with a stinging smack and the lamp smashed onto the floor. He tried to pull the screams back inside because he was home now, he was in his apartment, he was in a place where people were supposed to be sane, where they weren’t supposed to scream in the night, but he couldn’t stop them, he just couldn’t. It was like vomiting, like diarrhoea; and that was when he realised he was lying in filth, that everything had let go, the room stank, his pyjamas were soaked.

He dragged himself out of bed like an animal, dragged himself across the room and reached up and hit at the wall until he found the light switch, and when the light flared into the room he whimpered just like an animal and covered his eyes. He crouched there, shaking, clenching his fists to try to stop them shaking. He was covered in filth and the air tasted of shit and he didn’t know how to deal with it, didn’t know what to do.

He sobbed. He sobbed for a long time, until the sweat of the nightmare had become frigid dampness in his clothes, until the urine and the diarrhoea were cold in the cloth of his pyjama bottoms. His fingernails were clenched so hard into the palms of his hands that when he stiffly moved the joints he could see little half moons in his skin, little dents left by the force of his panic.

He made himself roll over, made himself sit up against the cool wall. He sat there on the cold wetness of his clothes like a child who had disgraced himself, and he stared at the room in front of him. It was a little room. His apartment was a little apartment and his bedroom was the smallest room in it barring the bathroom. There was just his bed and the bookshelves crowding the wall above it, a night stand and a chest of drawers with no mirror, a wardrobe with no mirror on the door. When he straightened out his legs where he was sitting by the door his feet almost touched the leg of the bed.

He could see the tangle of his blanket and sheets on the bed, see the stain left behind on them and the spreading damp patch where his sweating back had pressed against the mattress. He didn’t know what to do. He didn’t even know how to approach sorting this out. He was incapable, like a child. He wanted an adult to come in and help him. A doctor, a nurse, Napoleon…

He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t do this…

He looked across at the window and saw the pale split of light between the curtains. It must be past dawn now. He had been crying for long enough that the sun had risen. Maybe he had even fallen back asleep on the floor. Maybe he hadn’t. Things were unravelling all over again. He was losing his sense of time. The little travel alarm clock he kept by the bed had gone the same way as the light. It was smashed on the floor.

He didn’t know what to do.

Stand up. He stood up. His legs felt weak. He pushed down his pyjama trousers, wrinkling his nose at the smell, and dropped them on the floor. His legs still looked so thin, his muscles still so weak. He looked spindly and ineffectual, just as he was, just as he had always felt himself to be when he was growing up. Pathetic. A pathetic specimen. _Kuryakina_ the boys at school had jeered at him, with his delicate face and his blue eyes. _Irina Kuryakina. Irina Nikolayevna..._

He tottered on his stilts of legs into the other room. The curtains were closed in there too. The bright light and flashing movement of outside had felt like too much yesterday when he had arrived home from U.N.C.L.E. medical and he had drawn all the curtains. But he didn’t know what to do. His legs were sticky, filthy, he stank. He needed to go into the bathroom, didn’t he? He needed to clean himself. But it was like moving in treacle. It took so long for his thoughts to form. It was all so hard.

He staggered himself into the bathroom, he climbed into the bath. The enamel was a cold shock on his skin, so cold he gave a lurching sob. He turned the tap on and the pipes rattled and then water hissed and jerked, spitting out of the tap like a dragon spitting fire. He couldn’t tell if it were hot or cold. What was wrong with him? He couldn’t even tell if the water were hot or cold.

It was a while before he remembered to put the plug in. He must put the plug in. He fumbled it into the hole and he sat there with the water swirling around him, wetting the tails of his pyjama shirt, sweeping the stinking brown from his skin and mixing it into the water all around him. The noise was horrid. He had thought he could cope with the noise from the taps now, but it hissed and clattered metallically into his brain, and he pushed his hands over his ears and rocked and keened. He could feel it coming, he could feel them coming, the way unreality made itself real and wrapped itself around him. There were tablets that helped keep it at bay, but he could feel it, an engine storming down a track, coming headlong towards him, coming to smash him into another place.

  


((O))

  


There were bells. There were bells far away, ringing over and over. He was in a white, distant place. Everything rocked and turned and inflated and diminished around him. He was in a void, a cold, hard void, floating out between quasars and pulsars, tumbling and turning. He had to hold on to the sides because everything was spinning and he didn’t know where he was, he was lost, so lost. Even out here in the void the bells rang, the stars screaming at him in accusation, but he was afraid of falling to earth because that was where the birds would be with their vicious beaks and claws.

‘Illya. Illya, listen. Illya… God, Illya.’

He blinked open his eyes and stared. The tap was still running and the water was pooling glassily right at the very limit of the bath’s capacity, spilling over the roll top and flooding the floor. He felt so stiff and cold. He didn’t know how to move. Napoleon was standing on the bathroom floor, his shoes in a puddle, and he was reaching in to pull the chain of the plug, his jacket sleeve soaked and dark. He turned the tap off and the water started to suck and pull towards the plughole, and Illya stared at Napoleon and shivered and tried to work out how to speak.

‘The building manager called because apparently you’re flooding the apartment below, and you wouldn’t answer the phone,’ Napoleon said gently. ‘Come on, Illya, let’s get you out of this. You must be freezing.’

And Napoleon helped to lift him up as the water drained away. He stripped off the soaking pyjama shirt and wrapped him in a towel and took him into the living room and sat him in his small armchair.

‘All right, Illya,’ Napoleon said. He turned to the gas fire and there was a series of clicking noises and then the flames hissed into life. Napoleon rubbed him roughly with the towel and manhandled the chair closer to the fire, and the heat started to push into his limbs. When he rubbed Illya’s shins Illya winced and hissed, and Napoleon stopped and said, ‘Looks like you scalded yourself a little. How hot was that water at first?’

‘I – I don’t know,’ Illya said. It felt so hard to speak. He started shaking again, a shaking of emotional distress, not from cold, and his breath lurched, and he said, ‘I can’t, Napoleon. I can’t do it. I can’t be alone. It was so terrible...’

‘I’m sorry,’ Napoleon said softly. ‘I didn’t know you’d been let out. I was away.’

‘I know,’ Illya said. Napoleon had been in Chicago, and the doctor had asked him if he wanted to wait until his partner was back home, but Illya had been so determined to get home, to prove himself normal, to _be_ normal. And it had been awful. He had failed. He had failed so badly.

‘It’s all right. I’ll get you some clothes,’ Napoleon said, and he went away into the bedroom, and Illya waited to hear his reaction, because the bedroom must stink, but Napoleon just came back with an armful of clothes and didn’t say a thing.

‘Here you are. Let’s get this on,’ he said, easing a poloneck down over Illya’s head, helping him to get his arms into the sleeves. He helped him draw on underpants, helped him with a pair of soft corduroy trousers, went into the kitchen and made a cup of tea and brought it and put it in Illya’s hands. That almost made Illya cry. It was so thoughtful of Napoleon to make him tea, not coffee, and to make sure it wasn’t too full, because his hands still trembled and he spilled drinks so easily.

‘Are you up to date with your medication?’ Napoleon asked. ‘Do you have a medication sheet?’

‘Oh.’ Illya’s eyes slid over to the little suitcase that he had just dropped by the door when he had got in last night, and Napoleon read the look and went and opened it and fetched the sheet of paper and a plastic bag full of bottles.

‘All right. Morning. So let’s see...’

And Napoleon carefully worked out which tablets he needed right now and checked whether or not he should eat with them, and then said, ‘Do you have any food in the house, Illya?’

‘Oh, I – Yes, the nurses gave me a bag,’ he said.

They had given him a bag when he had left the infirmary. There had been a loaf of sliced bread, a packet of butter, a pint of milk, and what they called a television dinner, although Illya couldn’t see the relation it had to television. One of the nurses had come back with him in the cab, put the groceries away, put the television dinner in the oven, and then she had made him a pot of coffee and sat with him until that miserable meal was cooked. And then she had left him. She had kissed him on the cheek and wished him luck, and promised to come back tomorrow after lunch to check on him. And then she had left him in the empty apartment, and he had started to feel the walls close in.

The radio had been too much, with the brash advertisements and sudden music, but silence was worse. The hisses and crackles of the record player were like ants crawling in his brain. The television dinner had tasted foul, but he ate it anyway. And then he hadn’t known what to do with himself. He had sat in his chair and not known what to do. He had picked up a book and sat there staring at the sentences, and the letters had performed dances on the pages and he hadn’t understood a single word. So in the end he had just sat and watched the slant of light through the curtains tracking slowly across the ceiling, and when finally it had faded away to dusk he had donned his pyjamas and got into bed. He had tried to be normal. And then – And then –

‘Illya,’ Napoleon said. He had another cup of tea and a plate of toast in the other hand. Where had the time gone? He hadn’t even noticed Napoleon leaving the room. There were so many blanks in his life. Sometimes he lost whole hours.

‘Here you are. Take these with your breakfast,’ Napoleon said, holding out a couple of pills and a glass of water. ‘All right, Illya?’

‘All right,’ Illya said, and he took the pills, closing them tightly in his shaking fist, and swallowed them.

‘Now, you get your toast eaten and I’ll sort out your bed and the bathroom,’ Napoleon said with a smile that must be, had to be, false. ‘And then we can go out and get you some more groceries, yes? You need more than bread and milk.’

‘Yes,’ Illya said.

He didn’t want to go out. He just wanted to hide in his bed and sleep. He wanted to go back to the infirmary, to his little room in Psych, where he was safe and looked after.

‘I want to go back to the infirmary,’ he said. He tried to keep his voice steady and rational, but his voice was shaking and slurred with those awful drugs. ‘It’s too soon to be home, Napoleon. I need to go back.’

Napoleon’s hands were warm and firm around his. His eyes were very soft and brown.

‘Illya, I’m not going to pretend you’ve had the best first night, but that’s just what it was – the first night. It was always going to be hard. Don’t you think you should give it a little longer?’

He closed his eyes. He didn’t know how to explain the awful terror, the lapses in memory, the fear of the hallucinations coming back in force and erasing his being. It was all so terrible, so hard, and how could Napoleon understand? Napoleon was sane. He didn’t know how to explain, so he just started to cry.

  


((O))

  


This was all so weird. Of course he hadn’t expected Illya to be miraculously better on leaving the infirmary – but then he hadn’t expected him to have left last night, either, while Napoleon was still away, with no one at home to care for him. He would have blamed the doctors and nurses but he knew how good Illya was at writhing out of medical custody.

But this was terrible. To come in and find Illya half dressed in an overflowing bath, his bedroom stinking of shit, for Illya now to be sitting there weeping in his arm chair, was all too much.

He sighed and knelt down in front of Illya and rubbed his knee and said, ‘Look, try to eat, okay? I need to sort out this – ’ _This mess,_ he had been going to say, but he stopped himself. He rubbed Illya’s leg again and Illya looked up at him with red eyes and half smiled, and lifted a slice of toast to his mouth.

‘That’s it,’ Napoleon said gently, steadying his hand so the toast didn’t jerk away from his lips. It was awful the way Illya’s hands shook and his voice slurred and all his responses were dulled by the medication. Illya had always been so sharp and precise and steady. ‘Take a bite. That’s it. Now, you’ll be all right?’

Illya nodded, so Napoleon left him, idly wondering if he could hire some kind of housekeeper for Illya while he was recovering. Illya would hate that, but perhaps it would be better than a nurse. He glanced back at Illya and thought how much Illya would hate to have a strange woman bustling around the apartment and seeing him in this state. He sighed. He supposed he would have to just get used to doing it himself. Maybe Illya would take comfort in doing some domestic chores himself once he was more settled. He wondered if Waverly would let him have some time off to look after his partner...

He went first to face the chaos in the bedroom. There was the lamp, smashed beyond repair. There was the little folding alarm clock. He made a mental note to send that off to the watchmaker for repair. And then – ugh – there were the soiled pyjama trousers on the floor, the soiled sheets and covers, the mattress that was soaked in urine. He saw a folded rubber sheet on top of the chest of drawers and sighed. Illya must have never got around to putting it on. But he felt a spear of annoyance. Surely whoever brought him home should have attended to that?

He went over and prodded the mattress experimentally, and made a decision.

‘I’m buying you a new mattress,’ he said forcefully, going back into the living room. ‘Yours is shot. It’s been shot ever since you got it. A man should never buy a second hand bed.’

‘Oh,’ Illya said. He didn’t argue or say thank you. He just said, ‘Oh.’

‘And this time that rubber sheet’s going on top. I can’t imagine why the nurse didn’t see to it.’

‘Oh, I – ’ Illya looked shame faced. ‘I may have said some things...’

‘Ah,’ Napoleon said in understanding. Illya could be vicious when he wanted to be. Instead of imagining a feckless nurse who couldn’t be bothered he visualised a poor woman fleeing the apartment with Illya’s cutting words echoing in her ears.

‘I can see why you find the sheet unpleasant, Illya, but last night proves you need it.’

‘Yes,’ Illya said pensively. ‘Yes, it does. I thought I’d got over that...’

‘It was the first night, Illya,’ Napoleon reminded him. ‘First night. Tonight will be better. Besides,’ he said, making a snap decision, ‘I’ll be here tonight.’

Was it wrong that he dreaded the thought of that? But the expression on Illya’s face was worth it. He didn’t smile, but he looked so relieved. But Napoleon dreaded it. He needed to be at work tomorrow. He needed to write up everything that had happened in Chicago. But staying with Illya meant that he would probably get very little sleep. If Illya wetted the bed or, god forbid, worse, he would have to deal with that. And what if Illya succumbed to psychosis? What if it were too much for Napoleon to handle? What if he had to call an ambulance or forcibly return Illya to the infirmary? The idea of the night ahead seemed very long and dark.

He looked at Illya with a cheery smile and said, ‘Well, we’d better go get those groceries. Do you want to shave first or – ’

Illya stared at him, looking almost nauseated. Then he said, ‘No. No, I’ll shave later.’

‘All right, then,’ Napoleon said, keeping his tone bright. He wished Illya had chosen to shave because he looked such a state as he was. He was about to ask Illya what he might like to eat today, but then remembered how hard he found decisions at the moment, so he said, ‘Well, we’ll go and find enough for lunch and dinner. I’ll cook. You don’t have to do anything but come with me. Okay?’

‘Okay,’ Illya said.

  


((O))

  


It wasn’t okay. Oh god, it wasn’t okay at all. He had been out for quite a few walks with Napoleon, and sometimes with the nurses, before being released, but this was so different. This was terrible. He was ready to panic even before Napoleon pushed open the big glass-paned door that led onto the street. He felt small and dirty and vulnerable. The world outside seemed huge and brash and ready to crush him. It was like going back to those very early days after he had been rescued from the terrible sensory deprivation room, when he had been so utterly insane, when every sound and scent and sight had crushed him.

‘Napoleon, I can’t,’ he said. He was standing at the top of the stoop, one foot a little forward, ready to step down. But he couldn’t move. He couldn’t make his leg move. He couldn’t even make his lungs move, and that was worse. He struggled to pull in breath and he couldn’t do it, he just couldn’t.

‘Illya. Now, Illya,’ Napoleon said. His voice was distant and small. He was pushing at Illya’s shoulder, folding him like origami, trying to reform him into something else. And he became a sitting man, not a standing one. He was sitting on the wall, and the cool pressed into his buttocks, and Napoleon was crouching in front of him, holding his hands.

‘Illya, look at me,’ Napoleon said, and Illya sobbed, ‘I can’t,’ because he couldn’t see anything, because everything had fragmented into a Picasso painting; no, worse, a Braque. It was all turning into Braque, everything shading together and segmented with sharp lines, and he felt like he was going to be sick. He held onto Napoleon’s hands and tried to hear his voice and tried to get out a lifeline somehow, because otherwise he was going to drown.

‘Braque,’ he managed to say. ‘Braque.’

Napoleon’s lips were moving. He couldn’t make out the words, but he knew that Napoleon didn’t understand.

‘Braque,’ he said again. It was all he was capable of saying.  _ Braque, Braque _ . He needed Napoleon to understand, to rescue him from this terrible place. He vomited, he vomited lines and fragments of dull brown, and he was sobbing ‘Braque. Napoleon. Please.’

  


((O))

  


‘I don’t know,’ Napoleon said. ‘I don’t know. He keeps saying Braque. It’s like – ’

He had called for an ambulance. He hadn’t known what else to do, because Illya was vomiting and struggling for breath and sobbing and just repeating that one word, and it was more than he could cope with. So he had wrenched open his communicator and got headquarters to arrange an ambulance, and it was there within minutes. Illya was on the gurney inside as it rumbled through the streets, curled, his hands clenched like crabs, saying, ‘Braque, Braque,’ and one of the ambulance men was reporting directly to the U.N.C.L.E. infirmary while Napoleon tried to hold Illya’s hands and keep that tiny thread that connected him to the world from severing.

‘Braque,’ a nurse said after they had got Illya into the infirmary and the Psych doctor had shoved a needle into Illya’s thigh, straight through his clothes. Numbly Napoleon took the book she handed to him, staring at the picture to which it was opened. It was a book about the Cubists, stamped with the mark of the U.N.C.L.E. library, and there was a painting by Georges Braque. Suddenly Napoleon understood.

‘Oh,’ he said, staring at that picture.

He could hardly work out what it was meant to be, but he thought once there had been a musical instrument in there. But it was fragmented and distorted, as if seen through a meticulously broken mirror, and all the colours blended into a shifting dull brown.

‘That’s what happened to his world.’ He handed the book back and said, ‘Thank you,’ putting all his gratitude into those words.

Then he turned to Illya, who was starting to straighten out on the bed, his breathing starting to soften. His pupils were very dilated.

‘Illya,’ he said, looking directly into those pools of eyes. ‘Hey.’

‘Braque,’ Illya whispered, reaching out for Napoleon’s hand.

‘I know. I understand now,’ Napoleon nodded. ‘You’re a polymath, did you know that? Thank you for my education on Cubism, but maybe next time you can just take me to the Met?’

‘I needed a life ring,’ Illya said.

‘Did you get one?’ Napoleon asked.

‘You,’ Illya replied.

  


((O))

  


The doctor had decided that in spite of that awful descent into psychosis, Illya should still go home. Illya felt like sobbing when he heard that. He felt like raging. He just wanted his safe room with its butter coloured paint, with the nurses who came whenever he needed them, with the layers and layers of safe walls that stood between him and the outside world. It was so terrible out there and he didn’t know how to survive.

But they wouldn’t let him stay. The doctor gave him another injection, a stinging little injection that made him feel soft and dreamy, and then Napoleon was putting him in a cab and they were driving home, to Napoleon’s home this time, he gleaned, because Napoleon had a spare bed. He wondered if that terrible rubber sheet would be on the spare bed. He thought it would be. Napoleon had a number of things in a big carrier bag, and he thought that was one of them. And he couldn’t blame him. Who would want a house guest like that? A house guest who wet the bed and broke down and couldn’t even step outside without dissolving in panic?

‘Come on, let’s get you inside,’ Napoleon said kindly.

Illya stepped out of the cab. As Napoleon paid the driver the driver was watching Illya. He had been watching him in the mirror as he drove, looking nervous. He knew he looked terrible. He knew he was too thin still, and he hadn’t shaved today, and his hands shook, and when he spoke he slurred. He must look like some kind of monster. He needed to be inside, away from the buzzing minds and sharp eyes of the world. For a moment he had such a yearning, not for his apartment or even for the butter coloured room in Psych, but for the white room, that dreadful white room that had sent him mad in the first place. That longing scared him so much.

Napoleon went into the kitchen and started the percolator, while Illya sat on the sofa and tried not to rock. Then Napoleon came back into the sitting room and put a gleaming disc on the record player, and Illya said jerkily, ‘No, please. It crackles. I can’t stand the crackles.’

‘A tape?’ Napoleon asked.

‘Hisses.’

So Napoleon plumped down next to him on the sofa and said with a smile, ‘Well, I could bring you your English horn and you could give me a solo?’

Illya had to laugh at that. It felt good to laugh. It made everything relax a little more.

Napoleon patted his knee, and said, ‘The coffee’s decaffeinated, by the way, so you don’t need to worry.’

‘Thank you,’ Illya said. Then he fretted, ‘I don’t have anything here. No clothes, or – ’

‘Well, if you can survive on your own for a bit I need to run some errands, Illya. I need to get your clock fixed, for one thing, and get those groceries. And I can drop in to your apartment and pick up some clothes and books. Your horn and your oboe too, if you want. Do you want?’

Illya smiled. Yes. The sound of playing those instruments was one of the few noises that didn’t drill through his head.

‘I want,’ he said. ‘Please, yes. Both of them.’

‘Your guitar?’

He shook his head. ‘No, my calluses have softened. I – couldn’t stand – But – in the desk drawer, on the right, I have a little roll of tools for making new reeds. Will you trust me with a knife?’ he asked, half joking, half serious.

Napoleon patted his thigh again. ‘Of course I trust you with a knife. I’ll get those things, and some food, and I will be as quick as I can. Now, that coffee will be made soon. I have plenty of books if you can’t stand the television. Just – ’ He crouched down in front of Illya. ‘Just leave the gas burner and the fire alone, okay? Until I come back. Just in case.’

‘All right,’ Illya promised. ‘Just in case.’

Once Napoleon had left Illya curled himself more tightly on the sofa with his arms about his knees. Napoleon didn’t trust him. Of course he didn’t. Who would? He didn’t trust himself, because the idea of those knives in the kitchen and letting out his blood seemed like a siren song, and it was only his angry determination to not let the monster win that stopped him from following that call.

He had thought he was getting so much better but he had disproved that in his first twenty four hours out of the infirmary. He felt so awful, so tired, such an abject failure. He seemed to be standing on the edge of a cliff, his entire future a terrifying plummet to the awful, unmerciful ground.

  


((O))

  


When Napoleon returned Illya was fast asleep on the sofa. He could see the evidence of tears on his face, and he sighed. He put the bags down carefully and went to sort out the guest bed, thinking it would be better for Illya not to have to witness him putting on that rubberised sheet. He put all the clothes he had brought in the drawers and wardrobe and lined up a selection of books on a shelf. He put the two cases containing Illya’s musical instruments on top of the chest of drawers.

He stood there looking around the little room. Would it be all right for Illya? The ceiling light wasn’t too glaring. The drapes were heavy and would block out light and some sound too. The bed covers were quiet, muted colours, not psychedelic patterns. He wondered how Illya would feel about the mirror. He wasn’t keen on mirrors at the moment. Perhaps the same would go for the reflective glint of the glass covered pictures on the wall. But if he took those down perhaps Illya would think he didn’t trust him with the glass. The doctor had told him to make everything as normal as possible.

While Illya was sleeping after that first strong sedative the doctor had spoken with Napoleon and advised him on how to care for Illya, how to help him if he panicked or suffered hallucinations. He had given him a packet of syringes with doses of that sedative to use in a true emergency, to avoid Illya having to come back to the infirmary again. It wasn’t that Napoleon shouldn’t turn to the doctor if necessary, but that Illya needed to learn to cope. He needed to wash, to get dressed every day, to eat properly. He needed to go outside, to learn to talk to strangers again, to interact with people, buy food, do all those normal things. But he must come in for his psychiatric appointments, and be there when the nurse made her home visits, and the doctor told Napoleon very firmly that  _ he _ should continue to come and talk to a counsellor too, because looking after Illya was bound to be a strain.

‘What we want at the end of this, Mr Solo,’ the doctor had said, ‘is two functional agents.’

It was hard to imagine Illya ever being a functional agent again. Napoleon huffed and rubbed his hands over his face and went through to the sitting room. He shook Illya’s shoulder gently, saying, ‘Hello, sleeping beauty. Probably best you wake up, or you won’t sleep so well tonight.’

Illya blinked at him, red eyed, looking like a child.

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry, Napoleon. I’ve been terrible, haven’t I? Is this your day off?’

Napoleon smiled. ‘It was supposed to be, yes. Yes, it is, Illya. It’s my day off.’

Illya looked around rather dazedly, then asked, ‘Did you go shopping? Can I help you prepare lunch?’

‘It’s more like dinner now, Illya, and we’ll have a late supper. Yes, come and help me in the kitchen. I bought some steaks.’

‘You’ll let me touch the sharp knives then?’ Illya asked with a crooked smile.

Napoleon regarded him, concerned. ‘Do  _ you  _ think you shouldn’t touch the knives, Illya?’

Illya shuddered. ‘You sound like one of the psychiatrists. I don’t want to hurt myself, Napoleon.’

‘You  _ have _ hurt yourself in the past,’ Napoleon was compelled to remind him. ‘We both know the risk of self harm and suicide.’

‘I don’t  _ want  _ to hurt myself,’ Illya repeated a little desperately. ‘But my hands are so unsteady.’

Napoleon smiled then. He worried so deeply about those risks of self harm, but he didn’t want to go on about it.

‘Ah, well, maybe I’ll do the chopping then, yes? But come and be with me while I cook. Maybe you can cut. There’ll be something you can do, and at the least you can keep me company.’

  


((O))

  


Night was like a dragging shroud, closing in so stiflingly that it made Illya want to scream. He had grown used to a constant light around him in the deprivation room and he still couldn’t sleep without a lamp on, even if he had managed to progress to having the main light off. But there were too many new things in this room. The light glinted off the glass of the pictures on the walls. The little clock on the nightstand ticked so relentlessly it made him want to weep. He lay in bed itching with the need to move, to break out of the stifling space. His body, his mind, didn’t seem to be able to decide what it wanted. Space? Stimulation? Comfort? Noise?

He was so afraid of falling asleep. He could feel the rubber sheet beneath the cotton one and he was so afraid of soiling Napoleon’s spare bed. He was afraid of the dreams. He was afraid of the walls coming in and the air running out. He was afraid of the long silence alone with his treacherous mind. He had taken the anti-psychotic and he had taken his evening sedative, and his eyes were heavy but his mouth was dry. But if he drank his bladder would be full, and then he might wet the bed, and –

It was like ants under his skin. He couldn’t stay still. He got up and the rubber sheet creaked. He slipped his feet into slippers and he crept out of the room, and he breathed out a long sigh as the ticking of that little clock faded. But then his mind caught another ticking, the long case clock on the wall in here. It was a slower, deeper pace. Tock. Tock. Tock. Tock. It wouldn’t stop. He padded over to the clock and stood with his hand poised in front of it. He wanted to stop the pendulum but he didn’t dare.

He couldn’t stand it. He wanted to cry. That noise was like someone beating nails into his head.

Tock. Tock. Tock. Tock.

There was a clock in the kitchen too. There were clocks everywhere, driving into his head. Why did Napoleon like clocks so much?

He crept to the front door of Napoleon’s apartment and opened it silently, and stepped out into the hall. The silence was a blessing, but the air was stifling, the walls were too close. He didn’t think he could breathe. So he went downstairs, taking flight after flight of stairs, his hand trailing on the rail, feeling that sensation through the palm of his hand. That was soothing, the drag of the rail under his hand and the stepping and then turning, stepping and turning for each flight. It was like a dance.

He opened the door to the street and stepped out onto the top of the stoop. The air out here was cool. It was real. It filled his lungs, and he breathed deeply. At this time of night there was hardly even the scent of exhaust fumes. It was just clear night air, and he sank down onto the little stone wall that edged the stoop and rested his arms on his thighs, and breathed slowly. He was proud of himself. He had managed this without breaking down. Maybe he could sleep after this. Maybe he would be able to close his eyes. He felt so restless but so tired too. His mouth was so dry and his hands were still shaking. They never stopped shaking. He tried to push away that little spike of depression that rose when he thought about his shaking hands.

Perhaps he could sleep now. Yes, perhaps he could sleep. He got up and turned back to the door, put his hand on the pane of glass – and then he realised that it had closed fully behind him, and he was outside in pyjamas and slippers, with no money, no keys, no coat. He had nothing.

The panic started to crush in. He stood and clenched his fists and made an effort to breathe in deeply, to steady himself. The world was very large and uncontrolled at his back and all of his security was on the other side of that door, and he couldn’t get in. He had been so stupid...

No. He had to breathe. He looked around in the light from the streetlights. He knelt down and scrabbled about on the steps and then the pavement below, and eventually he found what he needed; a short length of wire. It was rusty but it would do. So he took it back up to the door and carefully fed it into the keyhole, and started to try to pick the lock. His hands were steady at first but the longer it took the harder it was to keep that focus, and eventually a jerk sent the wire sailing away into the darkness by the side of the stoop.

The little spike of panic rose again. He couldn’t unlock the door. That much was plain. Even if he hadn’t lost the wire it hadn’t been going to work.

There was a shop on the other side of the block, a twenty-four hour store. They would have a telephone. They would be able to help. But he would have to walk there, and the world seemed so large. The streets were quiet but there were still some cars, still some people. There were always cars and people.

He tried to steel himself. He was an agent, a grown man, perfectly capable of walking the streets of Manhattan at night. He had done far more dangerous things than that. So he made himself walk step by step down the stoop, keeping his eyes focussed closely on the ground in front of him. He couldn’t look sideways, couldn’t look up. He felt as if he were walking a tightrope. He had done so many dangerous things, but that was before he had been sealed in a white room and tortured with sleep deprivation for weeks and weeks.

He walked all the way around the block, staring down at his feet, at the brown slippers. All he needed to do was get to that shop. And there it was, the lights on, the door a little ajar despite the cool night air. He went inside and tried hard not to look at the overwhelming stacks of groceries, the colours, all those words. He went straight up to the counter and said to the man behind it, ‘I need to use your telephone. Please.’

The man looked him up and down suspiciously. ‘Look, man, I don’t serve drunks,’ he said.

Illya closed his eyes briefly. This was so hard.

‘I don’t want s-service. I – I need to use your telephone,’ he said again. ‘Please. I’m l-l-locked out. I need to call – ’

The man was looking at his shaking hands. He was stuttering and his voice was slurring badly because he was tired and because he was so very stressed now. He realised that there was saliva running onto his lip and he wiped it away with the back of his hand. He must look terrible.

‘ _ Please _ ,’ he said more forcefully. He was going to lose it. He was going to fall apart. ‘I j-just need – ’

He could see the telephone right there. It was just on the counter, right by the cash register. He reached his hand out towards it and the man jerked back, suddenly with a gun in his hand.

‘All right, buddy. Just stay still,’ he said, and he picked up the phone, picked up the phone that was all Illya needed to have Napoleon help him, and he called the police.

Illya stood frozen. He had stood before enough guns in his life. He had been shot too often. He hated bullet wounds. He closed his eyes and tried so hard to keep himself steady, to keep himself grounded in reality. He could feel it coming, he could feel the panic, the dissociation, the unreality.

There was a hand on his arm and he snapped his eyes open. A police officer was there. His voice was too loud.

‘Hey, buddy. Had a little too much to drink, huh?’

Illya breathed in a gasping breath.

‘Hey,’ the man said again. There were two police officers there, all shapes and facets and bright buttons like eyes.

‘No, I’m not drunk. I’m – I’m on medication,’ he tried to explain. ‘Please. I’m – I’m t-trying very hard. I’m on medication. I c-can tell you the names and d-doses. They m-make me shake, make me slur. I’m not drunk.’

‘There’s no smell of booze,’ the other man said. ‘He doesn’t look like a drunk.’

But the first officer’s hand gripped a little more tightly at his arm. ‘It’s two a.m., Pete. He can stay in a cell until morning. We’ll sort him out then. Well, day shift can sort him out...’

The thought of being locked in a cell sent horrors through Illya. He was afraid he wouldn’t be able to control himself. If he went mad in a place like that...

‘Listen, p-please,’ he said, and the more sympathetic officer touched him then, saying, ‘Look, Chad, you have a word with the shop owner here. I’ll take this one out to the car. He’s not dangerous. Look at him.’

Illya felt a small spike of hysteria that threatened to have him giggling. He had killed men with his bare hands. He could be so, so dangerous. But he held in the hysteria rigidly and walked with the officer out to the car and let him pat him down and got obediently into the back seat.

‘All right,’ the man said, slipping in beside him. ‘Let’s have a talk. Now, I’m Pete. Officer Pete Charleson, okay? But you can call me Pete. What’s your name?’

The man’s gentleness was so, so helpful. Illya swallowed and said very carefully, ‘Illya N-Nikolayevich Kuryakin.’

‘That Russian, huh? You an American citizen? You live here?’

He had to decide whether to reveal his profession or not. Wouldn’t the man just write him off as delusional? But Illya didn’t think he had the mental resources to fabricate something right now.

‘I live here,’ he said, and he gave his address. ‘I – I am an agent for the U.N.C.L.E. I – ’ He swallowed. ‘I was staying with a f-f-friend tonight. I – ’

The man held up a hand. ‘All right, now, back up a minute. You’re an  _ agent _ for the U.N.C.L.E.?’

That spike of hysteria rose again. ‘I – was tortured,’ he said. He closed his eyes tightly. It was so hard. This was so hard. He rubbed his hands over his face, scrubbed the heels of his hands into his eyes. ‘I was captured and t-tortured three – three months ago. I mean, five months ago. Three months ago they got me out. I was – ’ He breathed in deeply. ‘I’m s-still recovering. I – am on anti-psychotics. They make me sound as if I am drunk. I am not drunk, but – I am having a lot of trouble right now,’ he said, finally unable to stop something of a hysterical laugh.

‘You’re not kidding me?’ the man asked ironically.

‘I am not kidding you,’ Illya said very carefully, because he couldn’t work out if that question were serious or rhetorical. ‘I am an agent. My – my name is Illya Nikolayevich Kuryakin. My p-partner is called Napoleon – ’

‘ _ Napoleon _ ?’

‘Napoleon Solo. My partner. I know, he – he’s g-got a s-stupid name. But – I was staying at his apartment tonight. I – I stepped outside, and the d-door locked behind me, and – ’

Suddenly it all broke through and he sobbed. His chest jerked. He pressed his hands against his face and tried so hard to control it.

‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. I’m not – not drunk. I am not delusional.’ And then the hysteria pushed up again because he  _ was _ delusional. Of course he was. Hadn’t he spent months talking to an imaginary version of Napoleon, seeing birds that weren’t there? ‘I am not d-delusional about U.N.C.L.E.,’ he clarified. ‘I am – s-suffering severe mental problems right now, but I am getting better. I just need to get back inside. I need – ’

The officer put his hand on Illya’s arm then. ‘All right, buddy. Okay. Say I believe you. What’s your friend’s phone number?’

So Illya reeled it off very carefully, so afraid of slurring a number and making it unrecognisable.

‘All right,’ the officer said. ‘All right. Now, you just sit there a moment, okay? I’m going to go in there and use that gentleman’s phone and hope that you’re telling the truth and I don’t wake a guy up at this time of the morning for no reason. Okay? Now, you won’t be able to open the car door, but that’s only for your safety. Okay?’

‘Okay,’ Illya said. ‘Okay.’

It had to be okay. He had to hold himself, keep himself steady. The officer got out of the car and the door shut and Illya held himself very still. He mustn’t reach out to the door. He mustn’t try to open it, because it wouldn’t open. He mustn’t think about how he was trapped in this bubble in the back of the car. He drew his knees up to his chin and wrapped his arms around them and he rocked. He rocked and rocked. It was the only way to keep himself calm, to keep himself from screaming and screaming and trying to break out of this tiny space. He remembered the white, white, white of that cell. He remembered trying to prise his fingers into the seam of the door.  _ Trapped, trapped, trapped _ . He wanted to scream. The sound came out as a low hum, forced through his rigidly pressed lips. Rock, rock, rock. Stay calm. Stay calm. The roof of the car wasn’t pressing down on him. It wasn’t. He wasn’t trapped.

He couldn’t breathe. He hummed harder, rocked harder. His head was going to explode. His heart was going to explode. He gasped his mouth open but that let out the humming into a kind of formless cry, and it was only coming out, there was no in, there was no way to get air into his lungs.

And then the door was opening and he heard a voice.

‘Okay, buddy. It’s all right. Hey, can you calm down for me? Illya? Illya, I need you to try to calm down for me or I’m going to have to – ’

And then, ‘Illya? Illya? No, it’s all right. I’m Mr Solo. You just called me.’

‘Jesus, he was telling the truth.’

‘ _ That’s _ an agent?’

‘ _ He’s  _ an agent.’

Napoleon. Napoleon’s voice was like steel. And the car was shaking and Napoleon was next to him in the back, Napoleon’s hands were on his arm. The smell of Napoleon was all around him but he didn’t dare open his eyes.

‘Illya? It’s Napoleon. It’s all right. I’m here now. Settle down. Try to look at me, settle down. Yes,  _ he’s _ an agent, and if you understood the torture he’s been through – Illya, it’s all right. I’m going to take you home now. If that’s all right, officers? I’ve shown my ID. He’ll be all right with me.’

‘All right, sir. All right. You know, we really appreciate the work you do.’

Pete. That was the officer called Pete. Illya forced his eyes open and saw the man bending to look in through the car door. He saw his cap, his badge, glinting parts of his uniform. He was afraid the world was going to fragment around him, but he said, ‘Thank you, Pete.’

He forced himself to say that, and the words came out clearly enough. Everything flattened out, became a long white line, and he was floating on the surface. There was a feeling of peace. The man smiled and said, ‘That’s okay, buddy. You take care, huh? Say, Mister, will he be okay?’

‘He’s getting better,’ Napoleon said. ‘He’s just got out of hospital and it’s a hard transition, but he’s getting better. But I need to get him home now.’

‘Well, you sit tight there, we’ll run you round the block, okay, right back to your door.’

Oh god, he was going home… No matter that it was Napoleon’s home. He was going home. He just had to hold it together for a few more minutes, and he would be home…

  


((O))

  


Napoleon eased Illya out of the police car and thanked the officers profusely before nudging his partner up towards the front door. He heard one of the men muttering, ‘Jesus Christ,’ as he got back into the car.

‘You see,  _ I _ came out with keys,’ he said to Illya. ‘That’s what you need to do when you come outside. You take keys, yes?’

He glanced at Illya to see how he was taking the light ribbing, but Illya’s eyes were almost closed and he seemed to be struggling to hold it together. He put his arm around his partner’s shoulders and hugged him.

‘Come on, Illya. Let’s get inside and talk about this, yes?’

‘Okay,’ Illya said. ‘Okay.’

His eyes stayed closed and Napoleon helped him walk to the elevator, into that small space, then along the hallway to his apartment. He wanted to ask Illya so many questions, but he didn’t dare overwhelm him. Illya looked as if he were hanging on to reality with a failing grip.

‘Illya, do you need a sedative?’ he asked clearly as he got him in through the door. ‘Illya?’

Illya’s face was pinched, his eyes still squeezed closed, and he didn’t reply, so Napoleon stroked his arm gently and went through the motions of guiding him into the bathroom, encouraging him to use the toilet, then taking him into the guest room and sitting him down on the bed.

‘Okay,’ he said, stroking his arm again. ‘Illya, how are you doing? I need you to talk to me. I don’t want to give you a sedative unless you really need it.’

Illya looked up at him then, moving his neck as if it were very stiff, and he said, ‘I’m so sorry, Napoleon. What a complete idiot...’

‘No,’ Napoleon told him, but he was relieved to get those few words from his friend. ‘This time of the night is a terrible time for self-recriminations. What you really need to be doing is sleeping. So lie down in bed and I’ll tuck you in and sing you a lullaby, yes?’

Illya looked at him very seriously. ‘No singing,’ he said. ‘But would you just stay with me for a little while?’

Napoleon sighed and took off his overcoat. He hadn’t dressed, just put coat and shoes on over his pyjamas.

‘I’ll tell you what, Illya. Bump up,’ he said, and when Illya moved over he slipped into bed alongside him and put an arm over his chest and started to gently stroke him. ‘You go to sleep, Illya. I’ll be here, okay?’

  


((O))

  


Illya felt surprisingly well, considering the night he had had. His greatest relief was that he hadn’t soiled the bed in any way. He had woken up with Napoleon still next to him, and he had felt so secure that he had just lain there like that for half an hour, until Napoleon woke too and got up. He sat in Napoleon’s kitchen with his hands around a mug of tea, and then Napoleon deposited three pills on the table and put a glass of water down beside them.

‘There’s your morning menu, Illya,’ he said. ‘Make sure you take them, and I’ll cook you up something a bit more appetising.’

Illya regarded the tablets with disgust. He really hated taking them, even though he knew that he needed them still. He hated the way they made him feel. It was as if they stole the part of him that was alive, along with the sharper edges of fear and unreality.

‘Illya,’ Napoleon prompted him.

‘Yes, yes, I know,’ he said irritably, scooping them up and putting them in his mouth. He swallowed them with a gulp of cold water, and shuddered. ‘If you knew what they were like you wouldn’t be half so keen, Napoleon.’

‘I know they’re making you better,’ Napoleon said lightly, going over to look in the refrigerator. ‘Eggs suit you?’

‘Yes, anything,’ Illya murmured. Everything tasted unpleasant at the moment because of the pills. It was hard to muster enthusiasm to eat.

‘Hey,’ Napoleon said with a smile. ‘You need to put weight back on, you know.’

‘I know...’

He ran his finger over the knots in the wooden surface of the table. He became engrossed in it, moving his finger over and over on the same pattern, round and around and around. The longer he was awake the more he was fighting to stay anchored. He was so used to the pattern of life in the Psych department. The nurses came in at the same times with his pills, his meals were at the same times, his appointments were regular. Everything was regulated and reliable. Here he felt as though he were sitting right on the edge of a steep shale slope, and one movement would set a small stone rolling, which would set off a larger one, which would set off an avalanche.

‘Illya,’ Napoleon said, and he realised that he was rocking on his chair, swirling his finger on the wood, and he had been totally unconscious of his friend for god knew how long.

‘Eggs, Illya,’ Napoleon said, putting down a plate with two boiled eggs and two slices of buttered toast.

‘Oh. Thank you,’ he said.

‘Illya,’ Napoleon said very seriously, sitting down with his own plate. ‘We really need to talk, don’t we?’

Illya’s head jerked up. ‘Oh. Do we?’

‘You’re not managing too well so far,’ Napoleon said gently. He knocked the top from his own boiled egg, as if he were trying very hard to stay casual. ‘I know it’s early days, but you need to try really hard. They can’t have you at the Infirmary any longer. You’ve been there as long as you can be. They need those rooms for other patients. Illya, if you can’t manage here you’re going to have to go to a sanatorium of some kind.’

It was as if he had fallen from the edge of that steep slope. The pebbles had started rolling.

‘Ha. You mean an asylum,’ Illya said jerkily. ‘An insane asylum, yes? We have them at home, you know. People enter and they never come out.’

That thought terrified him. It scared him so much.

‘Illya, this isn’t the Soviet Union,’ Napoleon said gently.

‘C-could you promise me if I were taken somewhere like that that I’d definitely get out?’ he asked.

The look in Napoleon’s eyes was enough.

‘I need you to try,’ Napoleon said again.

Tears stung in Illya’s eyes, and anger welled in him like lava.

‘I  _ try _ ,’ he screamed, the pitch of his own voice startling him. He slammed his fist so hard onto the table that his plate jumped and his tea slopped onto the wood. ‘I try so hard. I – ’

‘Illya,’ Napoleon said, holding up his hands.

Illya gasped in air, closed his eyes, fought to steady himself. He had been taught so many techniques for calming himself. He needed to use them. He breathed deeply, breathed out for longer, breathed in again, breathed out long and slow.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘All right. I’m sorry, Napoleon. It’s just – I am trying  _ so  _ hard.’

Napoleon put his hand on Illya’s shoulder. ‘I know, my friend. I know. I’m just – God, Illya, I’m so worried about you.’

Illya huffed out a laugh. ‘ _ You’re  _ worried about me? Not half as worried about me as I am… I – ’ He flailed for words. ‘I – feel as if I am balancing, Napoleon, all the time. I’m balancing on a plate and one wrong move will make the plate tilt and everything will slip and break. I spend every minute trying to keep my balance, trying to hang on to reality, trying to be sane. Hoping that in acting sane I will become sane. I  _ hate _ that man for what he did to me, Napoleon. He almost destroyed me. It’s not certain yet that he didn’t destroy me. I’m hanging on by my fingernails.’

His voice quavered and almost broke, and Napoleon put a hand over his.

‘I know,’ he said. ‘I know, Illya. You’re so well compared to how you were at first, you know. You’re doing so well.’

‘Not well enough,’ Illya said tightly.

‘Well enough,’ Napoleon assured him. ‘Look, I’m going to try to get a few days’ leave so I can help you for a while. I think it would help to get you settled into a new routine, yes? You’ve been dumped back in the community with no structure around you. Well, we’re going to change that. I’m going to sort out set times for medication, meals, showers. You’re going to get up at a sensible time and you’re going to get dressed properly for the day. At night you’ll change into pyjamas and go to bed at a regular time. During the day we’ll try to do something constructive, but you’ll have lots of breaks too so that you can reset. Yes?’

‘Yes, Herr Fuhrer,’ Illya said rather ironically, and Napoleon laughed.

‘Come on, it’s not that bad. It’s what you’re lacking from being out of the Infirmary. Do  _ you  _ think some structure will help you, Illya?’

Illya smiled. Rigid as it sounded, it still sounded reassuring. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, I think it will.’

‘All right, then. Eat up, and we’ll work out your schedule. First thing you can do today is take a shower and shave, and then we’ll plan out the rest of the day.’

  


((O))

  


The rest of the day felt surprisingly calm and sane, and so did the next day. Illya had never loved routines except for the subliminal, implicit ways in which he went about his life, but Napoleon was right. Having a list of what to expect from the day, at what times, took away one layer of uncertainty from him. He didn’t know how to hold everything in his head right now, but with the schedule he could compartmentalise and get through the day piece by piece. Napoleon had him working through many little tasks; completing a jigsaw, learning a new piece of music on the oboe or horn, trying to focus on a journal article. There was nothing depending on his completion of those tasks, and they just helped him to focus his mind.

By the third day he actually felt able to leave the apartment, and he accompanied Napoleon out into the wide and clamouring world as he ran a few errands and went grocery shopping.

‘You’re doing wonderfully, Illya,’ Napoleon told him as they left the watch repair place where they had just picked up his mended alarm clock. They were headed towards the grocery store.

‘Am I?’ Illya asked. He was just starting to feel as if he had reached his limit. He was wondering how he would deal with the bustle and stimulation of the grocery store, and how to admit that to Napoleon. But then Napoleon looked at him and said, ‘You reaching that point, huh? Have you had enough?’

‘I’m – quite tired,’ Illya admitted. He had been clamping down on the feeling of falling apart for the last few minutes. Perhaps it showed on his face.

‘Look, I tell you what,’ Napoleon said, touching his elbow. ‘Come in here, come into this diner. You can wait here while I go to the store. How about that? Then I’ll come back and pick you up and we can get home. Will that be all right?’

Illya glanced through the great plate glass windows of the diner. It was busy, but there were booth seats, and he thought perhaps if he could get one to himself the security of that small cubby would be good. He let Napoleon take him inside and sort out a seat and order him coffee, because he really didn’t feel as if he could manage that, and he had done so well today.

‘All right,  _ tovarisch _ ,’ Napoleon said, patting him on the shoulder. ‘I’ll be back as soon as I can, okay?’

‘Okay,’ Illya said distractedly, stirring his coffee, watching the slow swirl of cream in the dark liquid.

‘Hey,’ Napoleon said softly, squeezing his hand a little. ‘Will you be all right? You sure you don’t want me to just take you straight back?’

Illya looked up then and forced a smile. ‘Of course I will be all right,’ he said. ‘All I have to do is sit and drink. That cannot be so hard.’

Napoleon’s gaze held him for a long moment, and then he nodded.

‘All right, IK,’ he said. Then he left.

Illya sat with his hands around the cup, staring into the swirls of cream again. Those swirls were slow and very calming, and he found if he moved the spoon every now and then he could set them off again. But soon the cream had all mixed in and it was a pale, uniform brown, so he took a sip instead and concentrated on the warm feel as it moved down his throat.

He could do this. He could stay calm. There was chatter all around him but he was alone in this booth and the high, dark red vinyl seat backs were a defence around him. He lifted his drink again, tried not to shake too much, took a sip, and concentrated on breathing. He tried to remember how he had done these things before all this, before that man had taken him and performed such cruelty on him.

For just a moment his lungs seemed to freeze. He remembered that day so many months ago when he had just been walking in the street and they had pressed chloroform over his mouth and nose and he had woken in the white room. It had been so easy. He was so vulnerable. He was horrifically vulnerable now. He didn’t even have his gun. Of course he didn’t have his gun. He wasn’t well enough to be trusted with a gun.

He clenched his hands, breathed, told himself to relax. Napoleon would be back soon. It was bound to take longer than he felt it should, but then he would be back, and they would go home, and everything would be fine. He needed to be able to do these things. If he ever hoped to recover he needed to be able to function in society.

He lifted his eyes and looked out across the room. He caught the waitress’ eyes and smiled briefly, and then dropped his gaze again. There. That was a human interaction. He had smiled at the waitress, and nothing had happened. Everything was still steady around him. The chatter carried on. Nothing was breaking up, he wasn’t starting to see things that weren’t there.

He took in another deep breath and smelt the cigarette smoke and the scents of food and vinegar and coffee. Such a mixture of scents would have been a dream in the white room, where he only ever smelt his body’s waste, until it was cleaned away. And those sounds… God… The people talking, that constant murmur of voices. The clatter of kitchen items and crockery. Footsteps on the floor. How rich real life was. He wanted desperately to become part of it again. He felt like someone who couldn’t swim, who desperately wanted to explore the sea.

‘Do you mind if I sit here?’

Illya’s head jerked up at the sudden question, trying to quell the squeeze of panic that such a direct interaction provoked. There was a thin, suited gentleman standing by the table. He had to work to process and understand the words he had spoken, to separate them from all the other jagged edged little sensory stimulations.

‘It is very crowded,’ the man continued.

‘Yes, it is,’ Illya murmured.

It was increasingly crowded and he didn’t know how much longer he could nurse this cup of coffee, but he didn’t feel able to order another. He hadn’t even thought to bring his wallet out with him and he couldn’t think how he would explain that Napoleon would pay when he returned. They might even throw him out. God, it was all so hard...

Oh, the man. The man was still there, still looking at him curiously.

‘No, I don’t mind,’ he said.

‘May I buy you another cup of coffee as a thank you?’ the man asked.

‘Oh!’ Illya said in surprise. Well, that solved his problems. ‘Yes, please. Decaffeinated,’ he remembered to ask. It was so important that it was decaffeinated. ‘I – I can’t have caffeine right now.’

‘No. Forgive me saying, but you do seem a little on edge,’ the man smiled, and when the waitress came over he ordered two coffees, being very careful to make sure Illya’s would be decaffeinated. ‘Are you well?’ the man asked once the waitress had gone away.

‘Well, I – get nervous,’ Illya said, running his finger along the edge of his saucer. It was so hard to verbalise, and that was one reason why he felt so uneasy being out in public. There was obviously something wrong with him, but one couldn’t just say baldly to another person,  _ I’m recovering from severe mental problems. I can become delusional. I hallucinate. _ ‘My – The medication I take for my nerves – it makes me shake,’ he said, holding up a hand to demonstrate, because people were just about able to accept anxiety as an excuse but the shaking and slurring repulsed them.

‘Ah, well, it’s easy to feel like that in the big city,’ the man said kindly. ‘So much pressure, of course. Don’t worry, young man. I understand.’

Illya smiled. It was so good to encounter kindness and understanding.

He looked up as the waitress came back to put two cups of coffee and a jug of cream on the table, and smiled his thanks. He picked up the jug to pour the cream and his hand shook frustratingly. His companion laid his own hand lightly on Illya’s wrist to steady him.

‘Thank you,’ Illya said, but something shuddered into his mind then. It was as if he had caught some long forgotten scent or – some sense memory. He didn’t know. He felt uncertain. He lifted his cup and sipped, and tried to shake the feeling off. He wondered momentarily if there had been a mistake, and the first cup had been caffeinated. Caffeine increased his tendency towards paranoia.

‘What are you nervous about, young man?’ his companion asked in his kind, curious voice. ‘Perhaps it will help to talk about it. It often does. I am a good listener.’

‘Oh – I – ’

_I was held captive by Thrush for two months and subjected to the most horrific sensory and sleep deprivation. They made a chaos of my mind. I’m holding on to sanity with my fingernails. I can feel myself falling…_

‘I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘I don’t think talking – ’

‘Now, come on, young man,’ the gentleman persisted. ‘I’m sure you’ll feel so much better. Now think about your situation right here, for instance. What’s making you nervous about this place right now?’

Illya sipped from his cup and put it back on its saucer, and it rattled against the china with a sudden, musical sound. He wished he could close his eyes and pick up his English horn and play a slow, steady tune. That helped so much. It helped him to focus. He moved his fingers as if he were playing, and hummed a slow bar.

‘What’s making you nervous?’ the man asked again, very gently.

‘The crowds,’ he said, almost automatically. He had spent so much time in the last three months confessing his inner feelings to a listening ear. ‘The crowds make me nervous, and the noise, and the bright lights, and – ’

‘And?’ the man prompted gently.

‘I’m waiting for my friend,’ Illya said jerkily. ‘I’m waiting for him to come back.’

‘Ah, well, waiting for something to happen is always nerve wracking isn’t it? Like trying to drop back to sleep in the morning when you know the alarm will ring at any moment.’

The back of Illya’s neck prickled. He still couldn’t stand alarms of any kind.

‘It’s – No, I want him to come,’ he said. ‘But if he doesn’t...’

‘I’m sure he’ll come,’ the man said easily. ‘Now then, you’re not just suffering from a simple case of nerves, are you, young man? They don’t give out medication for nerves that makes you shake. Isn’t that usually for something much more serious? Do you suffer from – from something like psychosis, young man?’

Illya’s head jerked up. His coffee cup rattled against the saucer again.

‘I – I – ’ He was feeling more and more on the spot. What was it about this man? Why did he have to ask all these questions. Did he think that because he had bought Illya a coffee he was entitled to ask these things? ‘I don’t want to – ’

‘Psychosis, hallucinations,’ the man persisted. ‘Do you suffer from hallucinations?’

‘I – ’

Very casually, as if it were through no more than an urge to occupy his fingers, the man drew a dark black feather from his jacket pocket and laid it on the table. He started to stroke the soft, iridescent plumes either side of the spine.

Illya stared at the feather and that feeling swam over him again, that feeling of catching a familiar scent, a familiar touch, as if he were remembering something from a dream or a deep-buried childhood memory.

‘Do you ever hear birds?’ his companion asked idly, stroking the feather.

And Illya jerked in breath, staring at the face opposite him. Everything else shrunk away. All the clatter and the chatter and the lights and movements around him all fell away. He was staring at this man, at his kind hazel eyes and his age-lined face, the slight tension around his lips that was there even when he smiled. His nose with broken veins, the lines on his forehead, the receding grey-brown hair.

And he suddenly understood. The noise and chatter came back with a screaming cry and was so loud in his ears, and he jerked up off the vinyl seat and he was on the table, knocking coffee, cream, sugar aside with his knees, and he had the man by the collar, had him pressed against the high back of the booth seat, his hand twisting so hard on the man’s tie that he began to choke. He wasn’t shaking any more because he had focus, he had so much focus, and he didn’t know what to say, but he said the words that ticked into his head as he ground his fist against this man’s throat, this man who had been utterly without mercy, was without mercy now, had not accorded him one single drop of mercy.

‘The quality of mercy is – not – strained,’ he grated. The man choked, his eyes bulged. ‘It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath. It is  _ twice _ blessed.’ People were screaming. Crockery was breaking on the floor. ‘It blesseth him that gives and him that takes. ’Tis mightiest in the mightiest. It becomes the throned monarch better than his crown.’ He was standing on the table, drawing the man up by his tie, shoving him back against the high booth seat. ‘His sceptre shows the force of temporal power, the attribute to awe and majesty – ’ Hands were grabbing at his arms, fingers prising at his fingers, men were shouting, women were screaming. ‘ – wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings,  _ but mercy is above this sceptred sway _ .’ He was shouting. His voice was the loudest thing there was. It rang in his ears, erasing the man’s strangled gasps. ‘ _ It is enthroned in the hearts of kings _ . It is an attribute to God himself. And earthly power doth then show likest God’s when mercy seasons justice!’

They had got his hands free and the man was purple, choking, somehow receding away from him. Hands were holding his arms so hard, pulling him backwards, his arms were wrenched behind his back, there was cold, slicing metal on his wrists, his arms were cuffed behind his back and he couldn’t get free, he couldn’t get free. He was outside in the rushing street, someone was shoving him, pushing him so hard. He screamed and fought because he needed to get back, to kill that man. The world was screaming. Something slammed into his side and he choked out a sob of pain. He banged his head hard on the roof of the car as they shoved him inside, and the door slammed, and he was lying face down on the seat with his hands behind his back, and the entire world was closing in around him. Hands and hands and sharp things. The beaks, oh god, the beaks of birds coming down on him, the scent of blood, blood trickling down his face, and he closed his eyes and rocked and screamed as the engine roared into life and took him away.

  


((O))

  


A police car was drawing swiftly away from the little diner as Napoleon returned, and he watched it idly, wondering what had gone on. Then he looked to the door of the diner, and his stomach gave a lurch. The door was open and there was a bunch of people standing there, looking after the police car too. The chatter was rising and falling like the babble of a stream, and he heard someone yell, ‘Call an ambulance, for God’s sake!’

Napoleon pushed in through the door then, looking towards the booth where he had left Illya, hoping against hope that he would still be there. But there were tables turned over in the centre of the diner, broken crockery all over the floor, and a man there lying on the tiles, gasping, his face purple, his hands limp on the floor.

‘Oh my god, Illya,’ he murmured. How in hell could this have happened? Illya wasn’t well, but he wasn’t dangerous. At least, he had been sure he wouldn’t be dangerous...

He just stood there, staring, but then he jerked himself into action, pulling out his identity card, striding across the room, calling out, ‘What happened here? Can someone tell me what happened? Let me have a look at him. I’m qualified in first aid, at least.’

And he knelt down by the man as a woman shrilled in his ear, ‘He just attacked him! Came out of goddamn nowhere and attacked this poor gentleman!’

‘He was screaming poetry at him,’ a man put in. ‘Completely insane – ’

‘Shakespeare,’ someone else said. ‘I’m sure it was – ’

Napoleon blocked out their voices. He didn’t need to know anything else. He put a hand on the side of the man’s face, turned his head a little, felt the racing of his pulse in his bruised neck.

‘He’s got a pulse. He’s breathing,’ he said.

But the man was unconscious. The purple was slowly leaving his face. And then Napoleon recognised him. He recognised his face from some of those terrible film reels of Illya’s captivity. Everything came together in a sudden swell of huge relief, because Illya hadn’t madly attacked a random stranger. This was Dr Malta. Dr Lovett Malta.

He jerked his head upwards.

‘Who attacked him?’ he asked. He knew, but he had to be sure.

‘Oh, a young man – ’ one of the crowd said, and another joined in, ‘A thin young man. Blond.’

‘Utterly crazy.’

‘He was a mad man! Pale hair. Completely insane!’

_Illya…_

Someone nudged through the crowd and knelt down, and Napoleon looked up into the face of a policeman. He flashed his identity card again and said, ‘Listen, this man is a wanted criminal.’

‘Don’t worry about that, sir,’ the policeman said immediately. ‘He’s been taken away. He’s in safe hands.’

‘No.  _ No _ !’ Napoleon insisted. ‘I don’t mean the attacker. This man, here,’ he said. He roughly pushed at Dr Malta’s shoulder, and someone in the crowd gasped. ‘He is a wanted criminal. He’s wanted by the U.N.C.L.E. for –  _ horrific _ crimes against one of our agents. Has an ambulance been called?’

‘One’s on it’s way,’ the policeman said quickly. ‘Look, are you sure – ?’

‘ _ Yes _ I’m sure. The man who attacked him is the man he committed his horror upon. Listen, when the ambulance comes it needs to take him to the U.N.C.L.E. headquarters. He’ll be treated there. But I need to know where you took – ’

Someone else pushed through the crowd; it was a couple of medics with a gurney. Napoleon breathed out hard and stood up, showing his card again, trying to be sure that the man would be taken to U.N.C.L.E.. It was so important that he didn’t slip out of their grasp. He got into the ambulance with the man, against the objections of the crew, showing his card again, insisting, and he made them drive straight to the garage entrance of U.N.C.L.E., where he had called to have a team waiting.

‘Thank you,’ he told the bemused ambulance men as Dr Malta was unloaded. ‘Thank you. He’ll be in safe hands, I promise, but he’s a wanted criminal.’

And then he stood, watching, as the low ambulance drove away and the U.N.C.L.E. team started to wheel Dr Malta into the service elevator, and then he thought,  _ Illya! _

Oh god… He should have gone after Illya straight away. But it had been imperative to get Malta into custody, and Illya was safe – as safe as he could be – with the police.

His heart lurched. God. He knew what happened to the mentally ill in the hands of the wrong people, and there was always a chance that some of the good officers of the NYPD would be the wrong people. They could be brutal to people they thought were mad.

He jerked through the elevator doors just before they closed and rode with the medical team up to the first level, where he burst out and jogged to the communications room.

‘Sandra,’ he said, panting, putting his hand on the shoulder of the woman at the main console. ‘I need you to get on to the NYPD. They’ve arrested Illya, and – ’

‘ _ Arrested _ ?’ she echoed in shock. It wasn’t so unusual for an agent to be mistakenly arrested in the course of their duty, but everyone knew Illya was off sick, even if they didn’t know the full depth of his condition.

‘ – and I need to know where he’s been taken,’ he ploughed on. ‘They might not know his name. He didn’t take his wallet out with him. Damn, I should have told the officer his name… Listen, you’ll be looking for a John Doe perhaps, taken in with severe mental disturbance after attacking a man in a diner.’ The woman stared at him, utterly aghast, but he ploughed on, ‘Okay? You got that? I’ll write down the name of the diner, the time, and – ’

He snatched for a piece of paper and wrote down all the details, and pushed it into the bewildered woman’s hand. Then he started to pace.

  


((O))

  


Everything was so blurred and soft. He remembered being dragged out of the car. He remembered how hard the hands had felt and how the cuffs had cut into his wrists and how he was shoved and pushed. He had been screaming, and someone had hit him so hard around the head that his ear was still ringing, his ear was swollen and tender, and he wanted to raise his hand to touch it, but he couldn’t, because – because –

He tried to move his hands, and couldn’t. There weren’t the hard cuffs any more, but there was still something restraining him, something that felt like soft, broad leather about his wrists, covering over the aching, bruised places where the handcuffs had been. They were fixed to the sides of the bed. The chains jangled, metal and harsh, when he tried to move his hands, and the sound was so awful it made him want to be sick, so he kept his hands very still.

There was an aching in his side and an aching in his head and his forehead stung.He remembered them kicking him, someone kicking him, when he had been in the depths of panic, when they had been dragging him from the car and into this building. He had been screaming, hunching over, trying to protect himself from the bird beaks and the wings, and the blows had rained on him, and then he was in here and they wrestled him down, held him, knelt on him without pity as he lay face down on the floor, they had pulled his trousers down and he screamed and fought. Then there had been a sharp prick in his buttock and then this great softness had overtaken him.

He lay there, blinking. His eyes blinked closed, the light became dim. They blinked open, he saw harsh fluorescent lights above him. Closed. Dim. Open. Bright. He was entranced with the changing of the light.  _ They’re changing guard at Buckingham Palace. Christopher Robin went down with Alice... _ And then a face loomed down over him, coming between him and the light, and he gasped in air because he hadn’t been aware of anything outside this little bubble, hadn’t known anyone was there.

‘All right, mister. You’re feeling calmer now, yes? Can you tell me your name?’

It was a man. A man in a white coat. Receding hairline, a lined face. Fear jerked through the sedative and he opened his mouth and tried to scream. He remembered that man’s face, the purple of his face, his own hands clenching so hard on his collar, using his tie as a cinch…

He thrashed and the man’s hand pressed on his shoulder, and Illya was shouting something and kicking, and then there was a sudden sting in his arm and another wave of sleepiness came over him. Someone was doing something to his ankles. He recognised that his feet were bare and someone was closing those soft cuffs around his ankles too. He felt so helpless, so scared.

‘All right, all right,’ that voice said again, and he blinked sleepy eyes and looked at the face. It wasn’t the same face at all. Receding hairline, lines, but blue eyes, not hazel. He wasn’t the same man. A sense of falling swooped through him and he jerked out a sob.

‘All right. Can you tell me your name?’

He grasped for English words. Languages were swimming in his head. He tried to make his tongue work. And eventually he said, ‘Illya. Illya. Illya.’

‘Eel-ya?’ the man repeated. ‘Is that – Is that your name?’

‘Russian. U-Ukrainian,’ he forced himself to say. His voice was slow and slurred and he felt so confused. The bed was spinning, he was floating so high. ‘Illya. Мое имя - мое - меня зовут Илья - M-my name.’

‘All right, Illya,’ the doctor said gently. He looked up and said to someone else, ‘Yes, start dressing that cut, please. I think he’s calm enough. Illya,’ and he spoke very slowly, ‘do – you – understand – English?’

He nodded. Oh, he felt so sleepy. How did he explain to this man that he had completed his entire doctoral thesis in English, in a completely foreign language to his mother tongue?

‘Cambridge,’ he slurred. ‘I – ’

The man put a hand on his arm. ‘Illya, the nurse is going to clean up that cut on your forehead. It will sting. I want you to stay calm.’

‘Calm,’ he repeated. He was so sleepy. He felt as if he were sinking into the bed, as if he were swaying up and down, floating on softness. ‘Floating...’

The hand pressed his arm again. ‘All right, Illya. Yes, Moira, you attend to the cut now. Illya, what’s your surname? Can you tell me your surname?’

It seemed so very important. There was a stir of movement and his eyes drifted sideways, and he saw someone in a dark uniform standing nearby, standing near pale draping curtains, watching him. He recognised the face of someone who had hurt him, and he flinched away. The doctor moved himself so that he was blocking his view.

‘Illya, the policeman is here because you attacked a man,’ he said. ‘I need you to understand that. You are under arrest and I’m here to determine your mental capacity. Do you understand?’

There was a sharp sting on his head, something cold and wet pressing against the cut and bruise there. He gave a little gasp, but the doctor’s hand pressed him again. The nurse was wiping blood from his eyebrow and cheek and the edge of his mouth. The blood had run all over his face and when he licked his lips they tasted of iron.

‘Do you understand, Illya?’ the doctor asked.

‘Yes,’ he murmured. ‘Понимаю. Understand.’

‘What is your full name?’ the doctor asked again.

Oh, that was so hard. The syllables seemed so hard to think of. ‘Illya,’ he said. He tried to form his mouth into the right shapes. ‘Ni-Niko – Nikolayevich – ’

‘Nikolayevich,’ the man echoed. ‘All right.’

‘Kuryakin,’ he finished. He felt mutedly triumphant. ‘My name...’ Then he forced himself into an extra effort and said, ‘Uncle. Tell – ’

‘All right, we can try to contact your uncle in a little while,’ the doctor said.

‘No, no, n-not my – ’ he tried to say, but the doctor was no longer looking at him. He had turned to the policeman.

‘Illya Nikolayevich Kuryakin. Got that?’

‘I think it could do with a few stitches,’ the nurse put in, and Illya turned his head very slowly to look at her face. Everything seemed so slow, delayed, as if it happened a few seconds after his body willed it. She looked down at him but didn’t smile.

‘All right,’ the doctor murmured. ‘Yes, it’s a nasty cut. Illya, we need to stitch up your head wound, but the nurse will apply something to numb the area. You might feel some pulling.’

‘All right,’ Illya said.

And while someone was doing things to that cut above his eye the doctor was bending over him again and asking him questions, but he couldn’t focus, he couldn’t think, his eyes were drifting closed, heavy, hot, everything so soft, and…

  


((O))

  


The doors closed behind Napoleon with a dull thud, and a key turned in the lock behind him. He and Dr Bainbridge had been let with reluctance into the secure psychiatric department, and they had come through three sets of locked doors to get this far. Napoleon hated the feel of the place already. He hated to see the other patients, to think that Illya was one of them, to think that he needed all of this security around him. This whole situation was terrible, and his heart bled for his friend.

The doctor gestured into a ward of beds, some of them with patients in them, some of them empty. At the end of the ward a bed was partitioned off by closed curtains, a police officer standing outside, and the doctor was making straight for it.

‘He’s in there?’ Napoleon asked in a low voice. On another bed someone was rocking and mumbling, and it turned his stomach.

‘Yes, that’s where he is,’ the doctor said. He reached out a hand to part the curtains briefly, and Napoleon went through.

‘Oh my god...’

His grandmother had always crossed herself at terrible sights, and momentarily Napoleon had the urge to do the same. Illya was apparently unconscious on the bed, still in his dark suit, minus the jacket and his shoes. But the side rails were raised and his wrists and ankles were cuffed to those rails with soft, padded cuffs. His forehead was swollen with a great bruise, with spider-like stitches holding a cut together in the centre, and his ear was swollen and red too. His tie had been removed and there was dark dried blood on his shirt. He looked terrible, small and fragile, and it seemed ridiculous that he was restrained.

‘Are you sure this is your man, Mr Solo?’ the doctor asked him in a soft voice. ‘An U.N.C.L.E. agent? He’s under arrest for attempted murder. He was quite violent when he came in. He was presenting as severely psychotic.’

‘ _ Yes _ ,’ Napoleon insisted. ‘Yes, that’s Illya. Look – ’

He ushered Dr Bainbridge forward, so glad that he had brought him along when he had got the call.

‘Dr Allen, yes, I’m Mr Kuryakin’s doctor,’ Dr Bainbridge said in his calm, reliable voice. ‘If you’ll let me go through the details of his case...’

The two doctors moved away from the bed and Napoleon sank down in the chair next to it, for a moment just laying his head on the chill bed rail and breathing out long and hard. How could Illya be here like this? He had thought it would be fine, leaving him in that diner. He had seemed fine. And now here he was restrained with steel chains locked to the bed rails.

‘Illya,’ he murmured, pushing his hand through the rails to take hold of his partner’s limp hand. He wanted so badly to undo the cuffs, but he knew better than that. There was still a policeman on duty outside, and it would take a good amount of persuasion from both Napoleon and Dr Bainbridge to get Illya released.

The fingers in his moved a little, flexed, and Illya murmured incoherently. Napoleon’s eyes shot open. He looked up to see Illya blinking sleepily at him. A look of relief flooded his friend’s eyes as he registered who was there.

‘Illya,’ he said again. ‘You okay?’

Illya laughed a trifle hysterically. He looked awful. There was saliva trickling from the corner of his mouth and his pupils were dilated, his eyes wandering.

‘I’m – I’m r’stained to th’bed in psych’atric ward,’ he mumbled, and there was the sound of a sob edging his slurred voice.

‘Yeah, well, you tried to kill a man,’ Napoleon said gently. He took out his handkerchief and carefully wiped Illya’s mouth dry.

Illya blinked at him, just stared at him for a moment. Then he said, ‘Я думал - Thought – I thought – ’ A look of horror flooded his face. ‘Oh, god, N’pol’yon. Tell me I w’s right. Tell – ’

Napoleon squeezed his hand. ‘You were right, Illya. Agent’s instinct perhaps. That was Dr Malta, and you didn’t kill him. He’s in U.N.C.L.E. custody, mad as a hornet, a bit bruised, but he’s all right.’

Illya seemed to deflate suddenly, as if he had been holding himself on edge waiting to hear that news.

‘Doctor...’ he said.

‘He must have been tracking you, Illya. Once you were released from the Infirmary he must have been curious to see how you were doing,’ Napoleon said, his lips curling in disgust at that idea. It was horrific enough that Dr Malta had done this to Illya in the first place, let alone that he had continued to haunt him once he had been released. ‘But we’ve got him now. He’s no danger to you any more.’

‘But I – But I’m still – ’ Illya began, and he lifted his arm, and the chain rattled. He flinched away from the noise.

‘We’re going to get you out of here and back home, Illya,’ Napoleon promised. ‘Dr Bainbridge is talking to the psychiatrist right now.

‘Home,’ Illya echoed.

‘Home. Well, probably the infirmary at first, Illya. But then home. Okay?’

‘Okay,’ Illya repeated. ‘’firm’ry, then home. I – don’like here, N’pol’yon.’

Napoleon looked around himself, shuddering his shoulders as if at a sudden cold breeze. ‘No, I can’t say I like it much, either.’ He tightened his hand on Illya’s. ‘Dr Bainbridge will sort out the medical side and I’ll sort out the legal side. Don’t worry.’

Illya smiled rather thinly. ‘You – you told me I’d end up in a ’sylum.’

‘You  _ won’t _ ,’ Napoleon assured him. ‘This isn’t an asylum. It’s the psychiatric department of a hospital. You’re not staying here and you’re not going to end up in an asylum.’

He hoped to god he wouldn’t. He hoped he wasn’t lying. He couldn’t bear the thought that Illya really had been permanently damaged by this. He had faith that the combined force of U.N.C.L.E. legal and medical would be able to extract Illya from NYPD custody, but he was so terribly afraid of what might happen if Illya didn’t get better.

‘Look,’ he said softly, aware that Illya was watching him, afraid that he would see the fear in his face. ‘You knew it was Dr Malta, didn’t you? You recognised his face from the pictures you’ve seen of him, yes?’

‘But I – ’ Illya began, because he had never seen those pictures, then he caught Napoleon’s eyes and said with great effort, ‘Yes. Yes, I – I knew was Dr Malta. When he started talking to me I thought – thought it was him, and I – ’

He swallowed, his forehead creasing, and he winced as he moved the bruise and cut. Napoleon knew how hard Illya found it to use creative thinking like this at the moment, but he had faith that Illya had realised it was Dr Malta for a valid reason, rather than just blind luck. He just needed the story to sound plausible to the police.

‘You knew it was him,’ Napoleon prompted.

‘Yes, and – and I – knew we needed to take him in, and – ’

‘That’s enough,’ Napoleon said with a smile, squeezing his hand. ‘That’s okay, Illya. Now, how do you feel?’

Illya grimaced, turning his head on the pillow. ‘Ter’ble. Sore. Sick. Don’t know what drugs...’

‘No, well, apparently they have you on some very strong tranquillisers. Dr Bainbridge isn’t too happy about that. He will be giving them a list of your medications, I’m sure, and he’ll get it all sorted out. The doctor said you were a little – um – a little violent when you came in.’

Illya snorted a weak laugh. ‘Jus’a little,’ he murmured. ‘N’pol’yon, get me out’f here...’

‘I will.’ Napoleon squeezed his hand. ‘It’s okay, Illya. Try not to get worked up. I don’t want you to get too upset.’

‘’m drugged up to eyeballs,’ he slurred. ‘Don’t think I could.’

‘Good, Illya. That’s good.’

Illya’s eyes started to drift closed again. He blinked them open and they started to close again. Then he flailed and awoke with a gasp, staring around, and Napoleon stroked his hand and said, ‘It’s all right, Illya. I’m here. Go to sleep.’

How he hated this. He watched Illya as his eyes fluttered closed again, and when they stayed closed for a good few minutes he let go of Illya’s hand and slipped out through the curtains. He approached the police officer, getting out his card.

‘Napoleon Solo, U.N.C.L.E.,’ he said smoothly. ‘Look, that man is one of our agents and I want to see about getting him transferred to our custody as soon as possible.’

The man stiffened immediately. ‘Well, now, I’m not sure about that, Mr Solo. He’s been arrested by the NYPD for attempted murder. He can’t just be let go.’

‘Look, if you could just contact your superior – ’ Napoleon tried.

The man looked mutinous. ‘No can do, sir. I’m to stay on duty in this spot until I’m relieved.’

‘He’s chained to the bed!’ Napoleon protested. ‘He’s hardly going to walk out of here.’

The man just gave him a look, and Napoleon raised his hands. ‘Okay. Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to raise my voice. But surely – ’

At that point Dr Bainbridge returned and touched Napoleon lightly on the arm.

‘Mr Solo, can I speak to you?’

Napoleon moved with the doctor over to the window, and he said in a low voice, ‘Look, I think I’ve convinced the doctor that Mr Kuryakin will be safe in my care. He needs to convince the board. And you will need to convince the police to let him go. I can’t do anything about that.’

Napoleon growled deep in his throat. ‘Yes, I might have to call Mr Waverly, get in the big guns...’

‘Is he still awake?’ the doctor asked, and Napoleon shook his head.

‘No, he’s drugged to the gills. He woke for a few minutes but he drifted off again.’

Dr Bainbridge sighed. ‘Well, I’ve briefed Dr Allen fully on his medication so there won’t be any conflict there. They’ve given him an extremely heavy tranquilliser, but the doctor has agreed to reduce it on my advice.’

‘Think you can persuade them to take off those restraints?’ Napoleon asked, eyeing the leather cuffs with loathing.

Dr Bainbridge smiled apologetically. ‘That’s not going to happen, Mr Solo. I’m sorry. I’m in agreement with the doctor in this case.’

‘You’re – ?’ Napoleon felt briefly nauseous. ‘Illya’s not dangerous!’

The doctor fixed him with a very serious look. ‘Mr Solo, Illya has been trained to be able to kill a man with ten inches and fifty pounds on him, in thirty different ways with his bare hands. I’m afraid he  _ is  _ dangerous. He is afraid and threatened and subject to delusions, and while he’s in this environment I can’t possibly recommend releasing him from restraints. As soon as he’s back with us he’ll be fine without the cuffs, because he feels safe there. But not here. Not now.’

‘Okay,’ Napoleon said slowly. ‘Okay. I’ll have to bow to your decision, I guess, even if I don’t like it.’

Bainbridge put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Nobody likes it. Believe me, Mr Solo, no one likes doing this to a patient. I’m going to try to get him transferred to a private room because – ’ He looked around as someone started shrieking just outside the ward. ‘Well, for many obvious reasons,’ he said, ‘but for his own safety, too.’

‘Yeah, I don’t like having him in a public hospital,’ Napoleon murmured. ‘It’d be like taking candy from a baby for Thrush to get in here.’

Dr Bainbridge patted him on the arm and smiled. ‘Well, you call the Old Man, why don’t you, and see if he can get some wheels turning? I get the feeling we’re going to be thrown out of here quite soon. They don’t like visitors on the wards. But maybe you can at least organise some U.N.C.L.E. guards.’

  


((O))

  


The walls seemed very close. The room seemed very small. Illya lay on the bed, still cuffed by the wrists, but at least his legs were free now. But he was in a hospital gown instead of his clothes and he had been here for at least twenty-four hours, and he hated it.

He was trying so hard to stay calm. Napoleon had promised he would get him out of here, and he trusted Napoleon. But then Napoleon had gone away, and although he had been told there was an U.N.C.L.E. man on guard outside the room he knew there was a police officer out there too. He felt so vulnerable because he was restrained. He couldn’t even sit up without asking someone to raise the head of the bed, and most of the time he was left alone, so there was no one to ask. He was so afraid of something going wrong, of being left here, forgotten, consigned to this place for the rest of his life. It felt like a terrible place.

When finally the door opened and Napoleon came through he almost sobbed. He fought to hold on to his composure because the police officer came in with him, and so did the U.N.C.L.E. man, a young agent called Sampson that he vaguely knew. It was so awful to be seen like this. But at least the very strong tranquillisers were out of his system now and he was back on his normal medication. He had never thought he would be so glad of that medication, but it was so much better than the deep, drowsy fog he had been in twelve hours ago.

‘Illya, it’s all right,’ Napoleon said as soon as he was through the door. He made straight for the bed and started to unbuckle the cuffs from Illya’s wrists without asking permission. ‘It’s all right,’ he said again. ‘There are no charges against you from the NYPD.’

‘I’m – Then I’m free to go?’ Illya asked in amazement, staring at his wrist as Napoleon freed it. It was so good to be able to move his arms.

Napoleon glanced around at the police officer who was standing just behind him. The man looked deeply disapproving.

‘Well, in a manner of speaking,’ he said more softly. ‘The psychiatrist who’s been looking after you was happy to give you over to Dr Bainbridge’s care, but the board were very worried about releasing you from the hospital, given why you were admitted. We’ve managed to convince them to release you into the custody of Dr Bainbridge and the U.N.C.L.E. Psych Department again.’

He put a hand behind Illya’s back to help him sit up, and held him as he swayed a little.

‘Give it a couple of days,’ he murmured in Illya’s ear then.

Illya swallowed on an irrationally disproportionate sense of panic. He had so feared being committed to this place and never being allowed out, and there was the sense that they were letting go of him with a great deal of reluctance.

‘Dr Bainbridge has explained to them the severe provocation of coming face to face with the man who did this to you,’ Napoleon continued. ‘The board were still rather reluctant to let you go, but we’ve got Waverly on our side and he knows people who know people. So we’re bringing you back to U.N.C.L.E.. He thinks that you might need to spend a week or so as an inpatient because you’ve had a rough few days, but then we’ll be able to try home again. Now. Let’s get you dressed and we can get out of here.’

He looked briefly around the room and gathered Illya’s clothes from the little wardrobe. Illya got dressed as fast as his shaking hands would allow, very aware of the other U.N.C.L.E. agent and the police officer still in the room. Then Napoleon looked at him apologetically and said, ‘Illya, we had to promise to transport you securely to U.N.C.L.E.’

‘I – don’t – ’ Illya began, and Napoleon guiltily held out padded cuffs. ‘Oh, Napoleon, no – ’ Illya protested. He glanced at the police officer and looked away very quickly from his impassive gaze. He felt naked in front of him.

‘Illya, I’m sorry,’ Napoleon said very softly. ‘In front of your body, not behind, and we’ve got a secure van to take you back to the Infirmary. You just need to put up with them for – ’

And he glanced at the police officer and Illya understood that it would only be until he was in the van and out of the sight of the police and the hospital staff.

He held out his wrists with a wan smile, and Napoleon winced at the bruising he had gained from that first spell in metal cuffs.

‘You know, you really should learn to behave for the police,’ Napoleon said lightly as he strapped the soft cuffs around Illya’s wrists, and Illya knew he was trying to cover his discomfort at doing this.

‘It’s all right, Napoleon,’ he assured him quietly. ‘I know what I did. I tried to strangle that man while reciting Portia’s ‘quality of mercy’ speech from the Merchant of Venice. I understand why they’re twitchy about letting me go.’

Napoleon quirked a smile at him. ‘Oh, is that what it was? Someone said you were quoting Shakespeare, and knowing you, that seemed just as likely as anything.’

‘That was what it was,’ Illya said, and he shuddered. ‘I – I couldn’t grasp any normal words. All I could think of was how I had begged for his mercy for two months, and he gave me nothing. Not even the sight of him.’

His voice quivered a little, and Napoleon put a hand on his arm.

‘It’s all right, Illya,’ he said. ‘Let’s go find Dr Bainbridge and get out of this place.’

It felt very strange to walk out of this place. He had been lost in his own panic when they brought him in to the hospital, half asleep when they took him up to the ward, unconscious when they transferred him to this room. He had seen nothing outside its doors. It was nothing like the U.N.C.L.E. Psych Department. It did not look friendly and soothing. It just looked desperate and clinical and harsh. He shuddered, and Napoleon put an arm around his back.

‘It’s all right,’ he said in an undertone. ‘We’re on our way out of here.’

‘I know,’ Illya said, but he felt as if he couldn’t breathe properly until the papers had been signed releasing him, and he was through the final locked door. They reached the entrance to the street at last and he tried to ignore the traffic and the curious looks of pedestrians. He climbed into the back of the van, a van they used for transporting prisoners, and he sank onto one of the narrow seats and laughed rather hysterically. He felt a moment away from tears.

Dr Bainbridge settled opposite him and looked at him very directly as Napoleon undid the cuffs and threw them with undisguised disgust into the corner.

‘Illya,’ the doctor said. ‘Are you all right? I could give you a sedative if you think you need it.’

Illya clenched his freed hands hard on his knees and breathed deeply and fought for calm. He had to fight. He had to get better.

‘I – w-want to try to – ’ he jerked out, and the doctor understood.

‘All right, Illya,’ he said gently. ‘You’re doing very well.’

Something broke, and he was crying, but it was just crying, just a normal outpouring of stress and fear and relief. He didn’t feel that terrible fear that he was going to be overtaken by his own mind. He just sobbed, and Napoleon stroked his back as he did.

  


((O))

  


‘We’re back where I began,’ Illya said a trifle wanly, looking at the butter yellow walls of the little psych room, the familiar furniture, the relaxing picture on the wall, the door with the little rectangular window in it. 

‘Not quite,’ Napoleon reminded him seriously. ‘You started off in that white room, Illya. Don’t forget that.  _ That _ was where it began. Everything else is just getting better.’

‘Getting better,’ Illya murmured. He fiddled with the corner of the bed cover. He was sitting on top of the bed, not tired in the least, but it was the most comfortable place in the room. 

‘Getting better,’ Napoleon said firmly. ‘You  _ are _ getting better. You’ve had a setback, that’s all. A few days here, and you’ll be home again. And don’t forget the nucleus of this setback, Illya. We have that man in custody and he’s going to pay for his actions. Waverly’s leading the interrogation himself. We’re going to crack him so wide open he’ll spill the world’s secrets, and then he’ll be in jail for a very long time.’

‘ I almost wish I had killed him,’ Illya said softly,  looking up to meet Napoleon’s eyes .  His desire to have killed the man scared him. He didn’t know how to separate it from the madness. ‘I know that he must hold valuable information, but I wish I had killed him.’

Napoleon patted his arm. ‘Yeah, I wouldn’t have been that sorry if he’d made a break and been shot in the attempt. I don’t blame you for a moment. If anything was going to tip you over the edge, coming face to face with him was bound to do it.’

Illya smiled thinly. He could hardly remember what had happened after he jumped at that man. It had become a blur. But he remembered what had gone before. He remembered sitting at the table and that man ever so gently eking out responses from him. He remembered that feather...

‘He must have been watching me, following me,’ he said. ‘His intellectual curiosity... He – he brought out a feather, Napoleon. He asked me if I was still hearing birds. So I knew... I – felt it before then. I don’t know how. It was as if I remembered him somehow, as if maybe I hadn’t been fully unconscious every time he dealt with me, and I recognised the sound of him, or the smell...’ He looked up a little desperately. ‘I don’t know what he did to me at those times, Napoleon. He could have done anything to me – my body – while I was unconscious.’

Napoleon’s lips pressed together. He looked uncomfortable. ‘I can’t pretend we know, Illya. There were only a few reels of your time outside the room. He didn’t do anything – untoward – in those reels. Nothing beyond the limits of his study. But I can’t tell you for sure.’

Illya shivered. He would never know those things and he had to try to put it out of his mind.

‘I am here and I am whole,’ he said aloud.

‘Yes, you are,’ Napoleon smiled. ‘And I have arranged with Waverly that when you go home I will have a week to stay with you and help you. You’re going to have to do this little by little, Illya, but you’ll get there.’

Illya looked around at the reassuring walls of this room and tried not to think about the insecurity of going home. He tried not to think about the threat of an asylum if he couldn’t beat this. He tried not to let that terrible, uncertain future crush him.

Napoleon’s hand settled firmly over his.

‘Lots of counselling, lots of time,’ he said. ‘You’ll start to wean off the medication and you’ll find yourself in control again. I have so much faith in you, Illya.’

Illya smiled thinly. ‘Thank you, Napoleon,’ he said. He thought Napoleon had more faith in him than he had in himself. He wasn’t sure who he was at the moment. He wasn’t sure what to have faith in.

  


((O))

  


For a full month Illya had not suffered a psychotic episode. That felt amazing to him. It felt like climbing to the top of a mountain and screaming for joy in the cold air. After his second release from the U.N.C.L.E. infirmary his adjustment to life at home had been so hard, even with Napoleon there for him for that first week. In the second week Napoleon had been back at work, and some days Illya had not left the sofa, sitting there curled and rigid until he heard the key in the lock and his partner came in through the door. But by the fourth week he felt able to go back to his own apartment for a few days at a time, and he managed, going through the motions of life and managing to make himself believe that he could get well. His last episode had occurred when he pushed himself too far, when he persuaded Napoleon that he should try, at last, to travel on the subway, because he needed to get used to crowds. That had ended terribly, when the train car had seemed to melt around him, the passengers all staring at him, the horror of it crushing him. He wouldn’t try the subway again for a long time.

But he had gone back to his own apartment, not Napoleon’s, not the infirmary, and he had managed to get past it. Every day for the last thirty days he had got up and washed and made himself breakfast and dressed, and he had managed to get through to nightfall without terrors overcoming him. For the last week he had managed to spend a little time in the office, on days when he was not undergoing his intense counselling sessions. The medication still made him shake and slur, but it was saving him. Even though he hated it, it was saving him. The doctor had told him it might be as long as a year before he could consider coming off the drugs.

He didn’t know what the future held. He didn’t know if he would ever be able to resume life as an active agent, or even resume full time work. Sometimes when he thought about that he succumbed to depression or fits of tears, but still the claws of psychosis had left him alone, and that gave him hope.

‘Did you know, in Japan, there’s a technique for mending broken pottery that involves filling the cracks with gold?’ Napoleon said, bringing Illya over a cup of tea and sitting down beside him on his low sofa.

‘It’s called  _ kintsugi _ ,’ Illya said, taking the cup carefully in both hands and bringing it to his lips. He took a sip of the hot tea, and set the cup down very gently. He had broken far too many cups and plates with his shaking hands. ‘Are you suggesting I repair all my broken crockery that way, Napoleon? I don’t think I could afford to.’

Napoleon laughed quietly. ‘No, my dear little Russian. I was just thinking about you,’ he said.

Illya’s eyebrow arched. ‘That I’m a cracked pot? Napoleon, if you’re suggesting that I am somehow more beautiful and valuable for falling apart – ’

His friend sighed. ‘Well, maybe it’s not quite the same thing, but I know how your dour, pessimistic mind works, Illya. Just because you’ve been cracked apart it doesn’t mean that you won’t come out the other side more whole than you were before.’

It seemed like a deeply flawed metaphor to Illya, but he was grateful to Napoleon for suggesting it. He was grateful that Napoleon spent so much time with him, nursing him gently through the terrible times, laughing with him when he felt good, holding him when he was scared. He didn’t feel as if he would ever be more whole. He felt as if he would always be afraid of suddenly snapping, like a piece of china with a fatal flaw.

‘It has been thirty days and I haven’t had a single psychotic episode,’ he said. ‘Did you know that?’

Napoleon turned on the sofa to look at him more directly, his face splitting in a smile. ‘Really, Illya? Is that so? That’s incredible!’

‘Ah, yes, it does seem incredible in the most literal sense,’ Illya murmured. He still had nightmares most nights and sometimes he woke feeling as if he were about to tip into unreality. But he hadn’t. He had hung on. He would keep on hanging on, until there was ground beneath his feet again.

Napoleon raised his cup of coffee and chinked it into Illya’s tea.

‘Well, here’s to the next thirty days, Illya, and to many more.’

Illya smiled and sipped his tea, and hoped.


End file.
